Author: ak159008

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Final Project Proposal

For my final project, I propose to create a website that portrays web as art.

The website will contain multiple images that have been manipulated in photoshop, but also somehow incorporate music and animation into it.

The purpose of my website is directed toward using New Media Art as a statement, therefore I will tackle a specific social issue and convey my opinion on it through my website.

Remix Manifesto: Blog 08

I found Remix Manifesto to be interesting, the main reason I did so it because of how many points the documentary makes that I agree with.
In terms of copyright, I side with the producer of the documentary and his passion toward believing that copyright restrains the creativity of an individual. For example, if we were to take the case of the combination of samples that Girl talk mashed up. Girl talk merely combines a series of songs and creates his own version of music. If we settle to believe that experiments such as these are results of stealing other people’s work, we somehow contradict the idea of gaining inspiration from past works. How is an artist to build up on his or her  on work, but at the same time keep up with the constant evolution of the arts itself. Bands from the twentieth century should be seen as a source of inspiration for the music that the current generation is producing. They are in reality the the building blocks of the music that we create today. Artists do believe in the essence of authenticity or originality, which convey them as distinctive. But, in my opinion, all works are in some form or another a replica of a former work as a result of drawn inspiration, but what makes these works authentic is the essence of the artist and their ability to execute their vision.

Another point that the documentary highlights is this idea of Fair Use, which in retrospect is used to justify a point through the use of an another artists work without being charged for copyright infringement. In my opinion, if Fair use allows us to take other people’s work to justify a point, why is it different from using the work as a justification of an artists creativity. For example, when we cite another author’s work in our essays, although we credit the person in our essays we somehow unconsciously use their opinion as our permanent back up. The same way when we take different samples and combine them together we are in some way justifying our creativity, or instilling in our minds that the sound we produced makes us an “authentic” artist.

But most of all I think that the very notion of remix is the current stage in the evolution of all forms of art. Remixing art brings familiarity and adds to the aesthetic pleasure of the very concept of art. For instance, when I listen to a mash-up of classics, I get a sense of nostalgia due to familiarity. Even though I know in the back of my mind that it is not the original song, a second or a few seconds of that sense of familiarity appearing and disappearing constructs a new form of art. I believe that remixes could potentially define our culture. Remixes are technically everywhere in our day and time and are most likely to persist or be the building blocks for another type of art form that will eventually add to the evolution.

Blog 07

The sound I decided to choose is called “Morning to Noon” by Jean-Claude Risset. On listening to the track which is nearly ten minutes long, I found it rather interesting how drawn to it I felt compared to the other tracks.

http://www.ubu.com/sound/risset.html

The noises switch from crashing waves, to bird noises,to all types of noises we hear in nature, to weird high pitched alien like noise that seemed to be created by various instruments. In my opinion, the idea that the artists was aiming to get to was his very own portrayal of morning to noon. The noises he combines somehow fit his definition to the start of his day, or what he believes might be the start to everybody’s day.

Just as Luigi Russolo say’s in The Art of Noise;

“Noise accompanies every manifestation of our life. Noise is familiar to us. Noise has the power to bring us back to life.”

Russolo talks about what makes one artist different from the other by his or her own combination of different noises, but the one thing they have in common is that it is in some form familiar to the audience and gives them a sense of revival.

I believe the idea combining different noises contributes to how we feel. When listening to Morning to Noon, I felt calm at first and then began to feel hypnotized like as though some of the noises were unfamiliar yet drew me in. But what Russolo teaches me is that all those noises are in actuality familiar because they are just various renditions and combination of basic noises that I am familiar with.

Nonetheless, The Art of Noise teaches us the actual beauty of noise and sound and how there is potential for great noises to be produced. What we are used to is music, in it’s different forms, yet as non-musicians we might be unfamiliar with the building blocks of music. Music has a structure that is only fathomable if we understood it’s basic elements. I know I like a certain type of genre of music, but I have no idea how that genre came to exist. Therefore, reading Russolo’s theory of The Art of Noise has potentially changed that. I am unfamiliar with tracks like Risset’s, yet feel drawn to it. So in the back of my mind I imagine maybe the music I listen to on a regular basis might actually have similar elements to that of Morning to Noon, which is in a way creepy but fascinating.

A Hacker’s Manifesto: Blog 06

A Hacker Manifesto seems to contradict the very idea of how society perceives a hacker. In retrospect, the idea of being a hacker has always been seen to me as an unconventional or an unprofessional character of a person with computer skills. A hacker is someone who is overly learned in the field of computers but would rather exploit than make good use of their skills. But then, the manifesto modifies the idea I have of hackers. Never before have I thought of a hacker as someone who is tracking down some form of an approval. Since society does not approve of the very notion of a hacker, he or she settles for the approval of a computer. A computer is practically an extension of a hacker, he or she has the power to control every last aspect of it and have it respond the way he or she prefers. Of the narrowed down subjects, I thought the one of Information to be most interesting. The amount of information that travels around a single computer is rather overwhelming. Regardless of how massive the pool of information can be, all of it in some form or shape is important or useful. So it is in a way considerable to think that the hacker obtaining some form of information is in fact trying to gain access to something that should be on a whole accessible. But then, this technique contradicts the idea of privacy or the reasons why all information is not in actuality accessible to all. It is understandable to think that having all this information out there in the world serves a purpose to every individual that puts it out there. Therefore, a hacker interrupting this flow of purpose to each individual is “abstract” but wrong, in my opinion.

Blog 05

The Persistence of Vision

The idea of moving images being perceived as a phenomenon of the eye is rather interesting to me. I have always thought of moving images as just the ability  of the eye to see several images at the same time. This notion however reveals the true ability of the human eye, which in par is the ability of the eye to allow the brain to retain one image for a longer amount of time disabling the view of the black flat image between each frame. This relates to a form of memory, the perception I receive from this idea is that the human eye does not really play the complete role in the moving image, but rather the ability of the human brain to remember the previous image that allows for motion to be recognized. Nonetheless, the human eye has to play some kind of a role for our brain to remember the image.

This somehow relates to illusions and reminds us of how incredible a phenomenon the persistence of vision really is. It challenges us into wondering if all moving images are illusions and  If everything we see in relation with moving images  are just pigments of our imagination. For example the image  provokes the brain into combining two different images to create a single illusion. This is confusing, yet scary in so many ways. The very concept of our eyes and brains being able to create something as bizarre as that is hard to intake. Nonetheless, it could justify any of  our questions about animation as an invention itself. In other words, the lesson learnt from the persistence of  vision is that animation would cease to exist if the human eye and brain did not work the way it did. In my opinion, this idea misconstrues our everyday perception of what our eyes can really do. I do believe that this idea is somewhat justifiable, but what I do not understand is why it is so hard to explain or even understand.

What in actuality is an illusion and what is reality?

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